Year: 2025

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a special guest post from irieriley, a churner who went from crawling to marathon long sprints in a short time.

In the world of manufactured spend and churning, it’s implied that there is a rigid structure of clearly defined rules that govern what you can and can’t do. Chase 5/24. Amex pop up jail. Don’t cycle Citi. Don’t cycle Synchrony*, etc. etc. etc.

A lot of this collective knowledge is sourced from smart folks that were willing to be the guinea pigs and push limits to understand exactly what those limits are.

But in the spirit of probing, you shouldn’t consider any of these rules as completely impossible to circumvent. I once cycled a Citi Double Cash 9 times back when I didn’t know it was an issue, and a large Citi balance was a prerequisite for a long, tedious afternoon of liquidation. I’m still alive years later, continued shenanigans and all. 

Now, I’m not saying to go throw in an application for the absolutely incredible Chase Sapphire Reserve Business™® if you’re way over 5/24, because it will be a waste of a hard pull. I’m just saying that historically, there’s been ways to get around these obstacles.

CoD streamers credit card bloggers ready to share the incredible CSR Biz news

Here are some common “rules” I’ve seen over the years that I wouldn’t hesitate to spend 5 seconds testing if I came across them:

  • No business cards
  • No Amex
  • Debit cards only
  • One deposit per day
  • Max $ deposit

Best case scenario, the rule doesn’t apply, and you make more money. Worst case scenario, the transaction doesn’t go through, and you proceed with your day. Medium case scenario, the rule doesn’t apply, but you get a terse email and need to get creative to keep your account open. The underlying systems and platforms that power our favorite banks, CUs and fintechs are just so finicky that you’ll never know until you try. 

While we’re on the subject of things not being what they seem, here’s some advice: In a lot of online communities, getting zero answers to a question you pose is likely a sign you asked a dumb question. But in this one, if your question is thoughtful and researched and nobody responds (or in my case, you are DMed to delete the question), you may be on to something. In this case, silence is deafening. 

– irieriley

*Ok, I will concede that not cycling Synchrony does seem to be sound advice.

A MSer continuing to enjoy the spoils of breaking the rules after realizing “debit cards only” did not apply in practice at his latest target

Introduction

There’s a spectrum of what churning blogs will talk about, ranging from ultra low frequency things like fuel dumps to an onslaught of affiliate card articles for the new big bank special. Somewhere close to the fuel dump end of that spectrum is discussion about credit card retention offers. Retention isn’t mentioned much, not because it’s a fragile secret, but rather most credit card affiliates relationships forbid bloggers from discussing it at all. Fortunately (?) though, I’m not burdened with affiliate relationships.

The Call

Retention offers encourage you to hold on to a card you might otherwise cancel, and should it help your mental model you can think of them as a secondary sign-up bonus for the same card. The mechanics of getting a retention offer are simple, call the number on the back of your card and say something like:

I was considering closing my card ending in [XXXX] because [reason], but before I decide what to do I was wondering if there were any retention offers?

Most banks will have an offer on most cards, and some banks, especially Citi and American Express, often have multiple offers available and occasionally won’t give the best one first. So, assuming an offer is available, the next thing to say is something like:

Hmm, thanks. Are there any different retention offers or than this one available?

You may have to do this multiple times to get the best offer.

The Juice

What do backs offer for retention? Typically something like:

  • American Express: 15,000-120,000 points (or equivalent statement credit) with some spend
  • Chase: $100-$300 statement credit
  • Citi: $100-$200 statement credit, bonus multiples on all spend, or an annual fee waiver
  • Barclays: Annual fee waiver
  • US Bank: Annual fee waiver, $100-$300 statement credit

This works on no-annual fee cards and on co-branded cards too.

The Gotchas

Some banks, especially American Express, see retention as a two-way street. If you get a retention offer, plan on keeping that card open for at least 366 days unless you want to be banished to pop-up jail and have a (low probability) retention bonus clawback.

Have a nice Thursday friends!

Alternative retention script (may not work as well).

  1. Bank of America has a targeted promotion for +2x or +2% on top of regular earning between August 1 and September 30 via USPS and (probably) email. Like last year’s version, it appears that the rewards are uncapped. (EDIT: Some cards are reported to have a $5,000 spend capacity for the promotion, others don’t)

    If you’re targeted, it’s probably worth spending some time with charges on your cards to get the fraud alerts under control before August 1, and it’s also worth figuring out how to pay Bank of America in a post alternative payments world. (Thanks to Rocky)
  2. Citi ThankYou Points has a 50% transfer bonus to Accor ALL through July 19. With the bonus, the fixed euro value of an Accor point, and the current US dollar exchange rate, this is a cash-out value of 1.74 cents per ThankYou Point.
  3. Citi ThankYou Points also has a 20% transfer bonus to AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue through July 19.

    Citi’s prior transfer bonus to FlyingBlue was 30%, which is *checks notes* 10% more than this one.
  4. Southwest has a Companion Pass offer:

    – Book two one-ways or a round-trip by June 27, non-basic economy
    – Fly by August 31
    – Get a Companion Pass for September 11 – November 15

    Rebooking any travel booked before May 29 will cause you to lose free checked bags, better cancelation terms, your dignity, etc.
  5. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards excluding Amazon, and on fixed value Visas and Mastercards running through July 8.

    What about Pepper you say? Look, I know an update is overdue, but give it another week or two, everything keeps changing in a static kind of way.
  6. Giftcards.com has two promotions for select gift cards, which include virtual Visas, Virtual Mastercards, One4All, and Home Depot gift cards:

    – $5 free giftcards.com gift card with $50 purchase using promo code BOGO50
    – $10 free giftcards.com gift card with $100 purchase using promo code BOGO100

    These codes come and go, so if there’s no inventory now check later and you may find it. Portals specifically exclude these codes from earning, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t work.
  7. The Bank of America Air France / KLM FlyingBlue Mastercard has a heightened bonus of 70,000 bonus miles and 100 XP after $3,000 spend in 90 days.

    Annual bonus XP stacks with these cards, but sign-up bonus XP don’t, and yes, you can get multiple.
  8. The Chase United Quest card has an increased sign-up bonus of 115,000 MileagePlus miles and 3,000 PQP after $4,000 spend in three months. You’ll need a promotional code from a United Agent for this offer. You can find one in the comments of a DoC post, make one up in the form UA3[XXX] where [XXX] is three random letters and numbers, or you can just use 999999.
  9. Chase Sapphire news:

    – Reserve referral links are now available
    – Preferred has a heightened bonus of 75,000 points after $5,000 spend in three months
    – Pre-October 26 earned points have boosted travel redemptions, post-October 26 earned points don’t (referring to 1.5/1.25 cents per point on the Chase Travel Portal)
    – Points are redeemed in FIFO order (first in, first out)
    – Pay Yourself Back remains

    I’m going to do my best to not talk about the Sapphire for the rest of the week, there’s absolutely no need feed the marketing machine.

Happy Wednesday!

Yes it’s about birds, but it might as well be about Sapphire marketing.

Introduction

How unlucky do you have to be to have the credit card community learn about your new credit card on the same day that the Chase Sapphire Reserve marketing blitzkrieg kicks-off? At least 17 unlucky units by my calculation, which happens to match Crypto.com’s luckiness as measured with my science-o-meter.

The Card

Luck notwithstanding, Crypto.com launched a Visa credit card issued by Comenity bank with tiered “cash-back” rewards, and those tiers are based on how much crypto you’re staking. For turbo crypto newbies, staking basically means loaning your crypto to others which locks you out from trades while your crypto is on loan, and the staking for this card requires you to lend for at least a year. The staking requirements and tiers for the card’s bonus and cash-back are:

  • $0: 1.5% cash back, $100 bonus after $1,500 spend in 90 days
  • $500: 2.5% cash back, $150 bonus after $2,000 spend in 90 days
  • $5,000: 3.5% cash back, $500 bonus after $5,000 spend in 90 days
  • $50,000: 5.0% cash back, $1,000 bonus after $10,000 spend in 180 days
  • $500,000: 6.5% cash back, $25,000 bonus after $25,000 spend in 180 days

Those numbers look great, except a few things:

  • Crypto coins behave a lot like stock, they can go up or down in value at any point
  • Staking your coins effectively locks them up for a year, giving lots of time for value to change
  • The price of the coin you’d be staking in, CRO, is very volatile
  • CRO’s price is down 60% from December, not a great trend
  • Cash back from spend is on this card is actually a lie, you earn CRO on your spend
  • You could stake your crypto elsewhere and earn a return directly from staking too if it weren’t tied up with the card
  • Crypto.com rug pulled with their own tokens in the past
  • Crypto.com’s compliance team for their prior version of their credit card were hawks, though that was Community Federal Savings Bank and not Comenity

In theory you could mitigate some of these concerns with hedged derivatives trading on CRO, but US traders are effectively locked out from (relatively speaking) safer markets for doing so.

The Gamble

Now, let’s think through some of the potential losses if we gamble on this card:

  • Your CRO may lose some or all of its value
  • Comenity may not like the kinds of transactions that we do and prevent you from earning on spend
  • There’s opportunity cost in staking

Finally, let’s assume that your staked crypto loses 30% in value during its lockup period. How much will you have to spend at each tier to cover that loss with the increased bonus percentage (ignoring the modest sign up bonus)?

  • $0 staked → $0: Obviously, this is all gravy at 1.5% cash back
  • $500 → $350: Spend $15,000 to break even versus nothing staked
  • $5,000 → $3,500: Spend $75,000 to break even versus nothing staked
  • $50,000 → $35,000: Spend $428,571 to break even versus nothing staked
  • $500,000→$350,000: Spend $3,000,000 to break even versus nothing staked

So it’s clear that if you’re going to gamble with an advantage, either you’d better have good confidence that you can get a lot of spend through without issues, or you’d better believe that CRO isn’t going to lose value.

If that weren’t bad enough, there tolerant cards from other issuers that earn 2%-2.625% on general spend and maybe more with the right payment types, so your opportunity cost looking outside of the Crypto.com ecosystem is real.

Tl;Dr

Opportunity cost is real, crypto is volatile, and crypto.com has rug-pulled before. It still might be a great card, but I doubt it.

Happy Tuesday!

A hat that guarantees its wearer will be left alone in public.

  1. I’m sure the rebooted Sapphire Reserve launch will be the noisiest in churning history, and I’m sure you can find a few dozen articles in literally less than a minute about why 200,000 points is the new black. The bonuses seem to be:

    – Personal: 100,000 Ultimate Rewards + $500 Chase Travel after $5,000 spend in three months
    – Business: 200,000 Ultimate Rewards after $30,000 spend in six months

    Let’s emphasize four points to help you wade through the impending onslaught of never-ending Sapphire Reserve crap:

    – Offers are probably available via referral from another player, no need to use a blog link
    – 100,000 Ultimate Rewards is nice, but 250,000 Membership Rewards is probably nicer
    – $30,000 spend for 200,000 in Ultimate Rewards isn’t actually a great return
    – Newly launched business cards often bypass 5/24

    Don’t let forced pseudo-urgency drive your decisions, be deliberate.
  2. Accor Live has registration open for double points on reservations booked by July 31 for stays through September 12, but only in the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Panama, and Brazil.
  3. Staples has fee-free Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  4. American Express offers has an offer for $100-$140 back on $350-$375+ spend at Marriott properties in North America through August 20.
  5. Gift of College cards are now sold at both Stop & Shop and Hannaford. Obviously this is useful if for college tuition expenses, but there are nuggets to be found in old school blogs too.

Have a nice Monday friends!

A 1920s vintage advertising blogger gets affiliate links.

  1. The FNBO Amtrak Mastercard’s sign-up bonus is now 40,000 points after $2,000 spend in three billing cycles, matching its all-time high bonus. These points are worth about 2.6 cents each for rail redemptions.
  2. The Ramp business credit card has a $1,000 sign-up bonus after spending $1,000 and making a payment within 90 days. You’ve also got to have $25,000 in an “operating account”, which I believe only needs to be linked to Ramp but not held at Ramp.

    The bonus is available only via affiliate links. I found a couple of random ones online for companies that I’ve never heard of and don’t know anything about, like this one for Fundrise (EDIT: Adds $1,000 to your Fundrise Innovation Account, thanks to Daniel G) or this one for some bank named “stifl” (EDIT: Adds $1,000 statement credit). Three things: (1) no, I didn’t make the name stifl up, but I wish I did, (2) I have no relationships with these companies, and (3) it’s entirely possible that these companies kill puppies, idk.
  3. Kroger stores have a 4x fuel points promotion running today through Sunday for third party gift cards other than Amazon, and for fixed value Visas and Mastercards.

    The post-Pepper gift card resale market is strong, looking much like the pre-Pepper gift card market.
  4. Rakuten has $300 bonus for new SoFi accounts, and you’ll get another $325 from SoFi with two $500 deposits in the first 45 days. For those who can’t math, $325+$300 = a bigger number. Actually whether or not you can math, it’s a bigger number.
  5. Hyatt has a code for between $50 and $100 in property credit for stays at Grand Hyatt properties in the Americas through September 30 using promo code GRANDSTAY.
  6. Emirates points transfers are back online with all major US banks. If your goal is Emirates first, Qantas is still a better option unless you have elite status.
  7. Stater Bros markets have $10 off of groceries purchased with $50+ in One4All gift cards through July 8.

Have a nice weekend friends!

The restrooms at stifl’s corporate offices, I assume.

It’s been years since the last Business Platinum refresh, and for reasons known to no-one, MEAB decided that haiku was the best way to report on updated, somewhat negative Business Platinum news. Today, we continue that tradition with new somewhat negative Business Platinum news about the 35% rebate on Membership Rewards bookings in any premium cabin:

Uplift soon leaves us
Premium dreams downgraded
September’s sharp edge

35%
Is limited to only
Airline selected

Mileage brokers cry
Discount Qatar tickets sigh
Dubai flyers lose

Codeshares give relief
JAL tickets look like AA
JetBlue’s partners glow

Multiple cards held
Opens more opportunities
Selections vary

One point three five cents
Is probably a low floor
Base price moves higher

Happy Thursday!

[no comment]

  1. I’m sure you’ve seen Sapphire news everywhere. Here’s a bit of tl;dr so you don’t have to read a bunch of thousand word promotional essays:

    – 1.5 cents per point and 1.25 cents per point travel booking uplift is going away
    – Targeted up to 2.25 cents per point bookings on some hotels and premium cabin flights
    – You can get both the business and personal card
    – You can get both a Preferred and a Reserve card
    – Approvals will be driven by an algorithm, no more 48 month language for bonus eligibility
    – The coupon overload is legit and real
    – Personal AUs will carry a $175 annual fee and will include lounge access

    For a great breakdown without blogger fluff, see this excellent reddit post for the personal side, and this adequate post for the business side.
  2. Southwest has a targeted offer for 6,000 bonus points for flying on a new business booking or 5,000 bonus points for flying on a new leisure booking, and the offer is valid for 90 days once you activate it. You’ve got until December 31 to start.

    The offer was also emailed with the subject “We’ve got a 🎁 just for you!” (Thanks to Larry)
  3. The Mesa Mastercard added Aeroplan and SAS EuroBonus as transfer partners, the latter of which is a unique in the US Market and is a great frequent flyer program for redemptions. (Thanks to FM)
  4. Second tier airlines are running second tier fare sales:

    – Breeze 35% off with promo code SUNSHINE book by Friday
    – Southwest fares “starting from $39”, book by tomorrow
    – JetBlue Award sale, book today

    No word from Allegiant or Spirit. Either that or I just didn’t care, who can tell?

Have a nice Wednesday!

Striving for adequacy and succeeding.